The Developer Rig – a tool for developers to build and test Extensions quickly and intuitively. As part of our product planning cycle, we conducted research to gauge how well we’re hitting this goal. Thanks to your feedback, today, we’re releasing a rebuilt and redesigned Developer Rig, and it’s available now.

To give developers a better experience, we made improvements in three key areas – reduced start time, intuitive workflow, and improved documentation.

Reduced start time

When you download the Rig, you just need to invoke a simple script to install dependencies and configure your dev machine. After that, type yarn start to launch the Rig and you’re in. We now drop a user directly in an Extensions building experience without having to manually enter commands. On the first run experience, you can create your own project or use a Twitch-provided sample. If you already have projects in the Rig, it pre-populates them for you. Finally, in order to start up front and back-end services, you simply click two buttons.

Intuitive workflow

We are also introducing the concept of an Extension Project - this is a combination of the Extension manifest you create on our dev site, along with your code. You can use the Rig to create an Extension Project, including your own code or samples created by Twitch. We’re also releasing a brand new React-based boilerplate sample that you can easily add to your Extension Projects. With an Extension Project, it will make running your Extension in the Rig a lot simpler with pre-populated commands that you need to run the Rig and contextually relevant tutorials and documentation for when you need them.

Improved Documentation

Due to popular demand, we’ve reworked the Rig documentation. We streamlined the README file (getting started info) and created a new document to focus on the Rig. In addition, a new Rig UI leverages the Rig itself to provide the contextual information you need. Developers can now rely on technical documentation for getting started or when they are stuck.